People v. Duff

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PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. MATTHEW SCOTT DUFF, Defendant-Appellant.

No. SC 163961

Supreme Court of Michigan

July 26, 2024

Syllabus

Argued on application for leave to appeal on October 4, 2023.

Matthew S. Duff was charged in the Oakland Circuit Court with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, third offense MCL257.625(1) and (9)(c). Police officers saw a parked car with its engine running in an elementary school's parking lot at 10:00 p.m.; the car was parked at the edge of the parking lot, facing the grass. The parking lot had two travel lanes between rows of parking spaces, which allowed for two cars to travel in either direction between rows of parked cars. The officers pulled into the lot and parked 10 feet behind the parked car at a 45-degree angle. According to one officer, he parked the patrol car in such a way that there would have been a collision had the parked car backed straight out. The patrol car's headlights and spotlight were directed at the parked car. The officers left their car and approached the parked car, with one officer on either side of the car. Defendant was in the driver's seat of the parked car with the windows rolled down. The officers questioned defendant, noticed signs that he was intoxicated asked defendant to exit the car and perform field sobriety tests, and arrested defendant when he failed those tests. Defendant later consented to a blood draw and admitted that he had been drinking alcohol that night. Defendant moved to suppress the evidence of his intoxication, arguing that it was fruit of an unlawful seizure. The court, Denise Langford Morris, J., denied the motion. Defendant sought interlocutory leave to appeal, which the Court of Appeals denied. People v Duff, unpublished order of the Court of Appeals, entered March 27, 2019 (Docket No. 347603). Defendant then sought leave to appeal in the Supreme Court and in lieu of granting defendant's application, the Supreme Court remanded the case to the trial court for reconsideration of defendant's suppression motion directing that court to determine when defendant was first seized for purposes of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. 504 Mich. 995 (2019). On remand, the trial court granted defendant's motion to dismiss reasoning that defendant was seized at the time the patrol vehicle was parked behind him because, at that point, a reasonable person would not have believed that they were free to leave. The prosecution appealed, and in an unpublished per curiam opinion issued on November 23, 2021 (Docket No. 354406), the Court of Appeals, Borrello and O'Brien, JJ. (Shapiro, P.J., dissenting), reversed, holding that the trial court erred when it concluded that the police officer seized defendant when he parked his patrol car 10 feet away from defendant's vehicle at a 45-degree angle. In reaching that conclusion, the Court reasoned that defendant was not limited to driving onto the grass to exit the parking lot because the police vehicle only partially obstructed defendant's ability to move the vehicle-in fact, defendant could have instead turned his vehicle as he was backing out-and no other coercive police behavior transformed the encounter into a seizure. Defendant sought leave to appeal in the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ordered and heard oral argument on whether to grant the application or take other action. 510 Mich. 952 (2022).

In an opinion by Justice Bernstein, joined by Justices Cavanagh, Welch, and Bolden, the Supreme Court, in lieu of granting leave to appeal, held:

A seizure may occur when a police vehicle partially blocks a defendant's egress if the totality of the circumstances indicate that a reasonable person would not have felt free to leave; while the position of the police vehicle is an important consideration to how a reasonable person would evaluate the encounter, courts must also consider the remainder of the police conduct during the encounter to evaluate whether a seizure has occurred. Additional considerations in evaluating the totality of the circumstances include whether the police clearly meant to initiate contact with the defendant and any relevant social expectations, both of which may make a reasonable person feel they were not free to leave. The judgment of the Court of Appeals was reversed because the totality of the circumstances established that defendant was seized before the officers observed signs of intoxication. The case was remanded to the Court of Appeals to determine whether Deputy Jason Pence had reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct when defendant was initially seized. To the extent the Court of Appeals decision in People v Anthony, 327 Mich.App. 24 (2019), established a bright-line test that a person's car is seized only if their car is completely blocked in by law enforcement, that decision was overruled as inconsistent with consideration of the totality of the circumstances.

1. Both the United States and Michigan Constitutions protect people from unreasonable searches and seizures. A warrantless search or seizure is presumed unconstitutional unless shown to be within one of several established exceptions. An investigatory stop is one such exception, and it allows police to briefly seize an individual if the officer has a reasonably articulable suspicion that criminal activity is afoot. Not all police encounters trigger Fourth Amendment scrutiny, however. Indeed, a seizure does not occur simply because a police officer approaches an individual and asks a few questions. Instead, an encounter is consensual, and no reasonable suspicion is required, so long as a reasonable person would feel free to disregard the police and go about their business. In determining whether a person has been seized for purposes of the Fourth Amendment, courts apply a totality-of-the-circumstances test: i.e., whether, viewing all the circumstances surrounding the incident, a reasonable person would have believed they were not free to leave. The focus of this objective test is on a reasonable person's interpretation of police conduct. Thus, what constitutes a restraint on liberty prompting a person to conclude that they are not free to leave will vary, not only with the particular police conduct at issue, but also with the setting in which the conduct occurs. However, in situations where a person might not wish to leave because of reasons independent of police actions, a more precise statement of the test asks whether a reasonable person would have felt free to decline an officer's requests or to otherwise terminate the police encounter. While a police officer's complete blocking of a person's means of egress in a vehicle could be a sufficient condition to find that a seizure has occurred, it is not a necessary condition because the seizure test requires consideration of all the facts and circumstances. Thus, a seizure may occur when a police vehicle partially blocks a defendant's egress if the totality of the circumstances indicate that a reasonable person would not have felt free to leave. Accordingly, while the position of the police vehicle is an important consideration to how a reasonable person would evaluate the encounter, courts must also consider the remainder of the police conduct during the encounter to evaluate whether a seizure occurred. An additional consideration under the totality-of-the-circumstances test is whether it is clear that a police officer meant to initiate contact with the defendant and that the defendant was not free to leave. While there are valid safety reasons for police officers to approach a vehicle that they are investigating from multiple sides and to use flashlights in dim light, such actions also limit the available paths of egress for a reasonable driver. Actions taken with officer safety in mind can simultaneously constitute a show of authority-for example, consider the act of drawing a flashlight or a firearm. Whether a police officer's prudential procedures are justified has little bearing on whether a reasonable person might feel free to leave or otherwise terminate an encounter. To the extent that the Anthony Court established a bright-line test that a seizure occurs only if the person's car was completely blocked in, that decision was overruled because it was inconsistent with general Fourth Amendment jurisprudence in that it failed to consider whether a reasonable person would have felt free to leave the scene under the totality of the circumstances; such bright-line rules are necessarily at odds with Fourth Amendment analysis given that the reasonable-person standard is an imprecise test.

2. The trial court clearly erred when it found that defendant's only means of egress was to drive over the grass in front of him. Defendant could have turned his steering wheel while backing up and driven over empty parking spaces to move his vehicle away from the police encounter. Accordingly, the police here did not completely block defendant in. However although that would not constitute a misdemeanor or traffic infraction, a reasonable person would likely assume that driving over the painted spaces is either explicitly prohibited or at least frowned upon while driving under direct police surveillance; this social expectation is relevant in considering the totality of the circumstances. While defendant's car was only partially blocked in, the remaining police conduct combined with that fact made the police conduct coercive for purposes of Fourth Amendment analysis: (1) the headlights and spotlight of the patrol car were activated and shining into defendant's parked car, (2) the encounter took place at 10:00 p.m. on a Sunday in an empty parking lot, so it would have been clear that the police were there solely to make...